


Act 2 or [What if George of Clarence survived the Tower AU]

by Lady_Plantagenet



Series: These Giddy Hatchings [2]
Category: 15th Century CE RPF, Richard III - Shakespeare, The Sunne in Splendour - Sharon Kay Penman, The White Queen (TV)
Genre: All previous tags apply, F/M, Fortune's Wheel, Gen, Legal Death and Destitution (relative), Let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of..., NEVERTHELESS, Noblemen having long coversations, Now to whom does the archive warning apply? Dun Dun Dunnnnn, Sibling Rivalry, The Law of Attainder, but turned up to level 1000, martial bliss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-14 22:34:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28553193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Plantagenet/pseuds/Lady_Plantagenet
Summary: [ENTER: Three brothers: Two delirious, one more exasperated, also; an heiress disinherited by other means and a restless young duke that stared his real future in the face and didn’t even know it]
Relationships: Edward IV of England & George Plantagenet Duke of Clarence, Edward IV of England & George Plantagenet Duke of Clarence & Richard III of England, George Plantagenet Duke of Clarence & Henry Stafford Duke of Buckingham, George Plantagenet Duke of Clarence & Richard III, Isabel Neville/George Plantagenet Duke of Clarence
Series: These Giddy Hatchings [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2088273
Comments: 9
Kudos: 2
Collections: Histories Ficathon XI





	Act 2 or [What if George of Clarence survived the Tower AU]

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheGoldenGhost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGoldenGhost/gifts).



[SCENE 1]:

The Duke and his Duchess came bounding into the king’s bedchamber, in a frenzy, they fell over one another as if the ground were made of trestles. Many an onlooker pronounced them in their cups, the smell was there, and so - trailings of red stain showed were the flagstones locked. Nevertheless, ‘Leave me to my brother’ George spoke first and clearly. Edward looked up with a weak smile while Queen Elizabeth looked down and shuffled as though in penance, the rest of her attendants following, leaving the way clear.

Hastings, Dorset, Grey, Rivers, they were all about Edward like a cudgel when he let out a great cough, which he quickly dismissed and then another, for which he did not excuse himself. At the edge of the froth, George resorted to elbowing himself to his brother’s side as if time was in so little supply that Chesapeake manners were not only warranted but natural. 

Across many afternoons, tucked in L’érber, Isabel had seen the urchins scuffle at each other like this, but where the lords paid him no heed, she grew amused by how awkward her husband looked in those manoeuvrings. Somehow, he had always possessed a daintiness about him and it vexed him to no end when she said as much. She let her back rest against the wall and folded her hands. Edward was his brother after all, not hers. Richard withdrew to the other available corner, two dark points as far from each other as from the clamour of whinges and pawing.

The dawn light slipped through the stained glass a blue pale and soft as a swaddling’s cloth, an errant pink hue also falling through the sky dappled the dying King’s cheeks as those of a newborn. Silence suddenly cleared. And Isabel came closer, then could swear that she had not known his fleshiness to have taken so heavily to his features. A twinge of guilt pressed on her, she thought back to his cruel taunts at Warwick Castle those ten years past, though eager she was to be his sister and reconcile him to Warwick. And then years later, how at St Paul’s he had paraded Warwick’s corpse as the trophy of Barnet. 

Before her lay this man whose rosebud lips, pain contorted in a struggle against the blubber of his own cheeks. How inoffensive, helpless the king looked with a chest that heaved as if it were caged in iron, brown hair that his own wasting sweat matted to his forehead (and the attendants in peace let George brush away). Richard stayed back whereas she made for the bed, the black wool of her dagged sleeves sweeping over the linen. It was not with duty but genuine affection that she kissed the forehead of her husband’s repriever. This warrior turned picture of futility.

The brown of Edward’s eyes took on a new fever when George’s set on his ‘Oh unfortunate brother for whose life I had thought none made suit. I expect you would chide me, so easily led was I by some sorcerer’s babble, I would had myself committed of the most murderous negligence had the words of our mother and sister of Burgundy not reached us in time. This that did touch our hearts deeper than any spell, had given unto me the sweetest of salvations. As did your lady’s constancy, for there be not enough flames in hell for a brother-killer’ with that he let go of George’s fussing fingers and narrowed his intelligent eyes towards Isabel, as he was wont to do when amused by others’ folly and about to offer a clever respite. It broke the spirits for all who knew him at that time, and so, all gathered in the thought on how it would be a sight never to be seen again. ‘Yet we do think my lady of Clarence entertains a very imaginative account of this mishap’

‘And one for which I take great offense!’ Richard proclaimed as he filed to the center as Buckingham crept in ‘my lord, how can I brook such grave accusations from my lady, that I would plot fratricide? Praise be to god that you too hold to logic and that it was not I that kept the reprieve and letters from reaching you or Brackenbury’

‘Be silent!’ bellowed George, rising from where he knelt ‘I will not have you speak thus of my lady nor let you mar our brother’s final hours with your graft and play- acting‘ Hastings was eyeing him and he pressed his lips tighter in response. In that flash, the man’s face sprang out of soberness just long enough for George to read his gloat and what it said:  and lo, milords and ladies, the tempestuous Clarence that we knew.

Stood besides, unremarkable in the black attire he invariably wore as if everyday death trifled him was Richard- nay now rechristened to George as Gloucester. George fixed him with one of his more knowing looks and Gloucester shifted opposite him across the bed with the fleet of a shadow in the hour of dawn.

‘Such recalcitrance’ he whispered feigning a shudder and crossing himself

‘Recalcitrance? Pah if only-‘

Elizabeth came upon them, stunning both their postures as she grabbed them by the hands as their mother hadn’t done since they were Fotheringhay boys at each other’s necks over Richard’s mounted figures or George’s St George knights. Gloucester snapped his hand back with a drag of his lower shoulder, and both women were eyeing them when George also withdrew his, within neither’s scowl was laced anything of a mother’s hidden amusement. ‘You are both heathens, haplessly you squabble like two capons. Had you either matured heads, you would not have matters of this earth draw your battle grounds in this room, this room of all places where my noble Edward lies languishing’

‘Matters of kingship dance in both realms temporal and spiritual, madame’ Gloucester’s tone warned ‘A concept elusive to the laity, as I am sure you would well appreciate’

‘Matters of kingship?’ George’s curiosity piqued ‘What would we discuss? I, Clarence, would be Lord protector for our little prince until he comes of age. That it was agreed before my unlawful apprehension’ he paused to find the rest of the room had gone silent. Perturbed, what in his words could have invited such reactions? Had they read his other thoughts? George knew it was not Gloucester that needed telling, but more did the others need reminding that but for his brother’s contrivances he would have stayed the Lord Protector. Withall, when a hero faced a beast, he knew how no matter the stillness, a lummoxed carcass should not be approached and proclaimed a trophy, until it for a surety would not spring up to disarm him, he needed his brother thoroughly carved up before all. This was to be the scene where Gloucester’s contrivances for the protectorship would be proclaimed as over ‘that is if his grace had amended such provisions since last discussed’.

A breathy sound rumbled from below, it was Edward’s strongest and last protest. Certain that he would now see a corpse. George reluctantly looked down. The late king’s eyes fled in no direction, taking with, all the energy, kindnesses and love that had made his brother’s warmth. Dissipated likewise were also all the disappointments, bitter disillusionments and then apathies that, throughout the years, had made his brother’s mask. Now in this effigy, George could not retrace what had only minutes ago been there, beating with a valiance that scared and ashamed him in equal measure in how sure it was that it would prevail over death.

Elizabeth’s mouth was still twitching as though in her lay the last embers of Edward’s spirit, fat tears spilled over, to her neck and lower where the the ermine patterned. Their mother unlatched the window and the drizzle struck at the Queen’s white furs, the collar sticking to her face just as Edward’s whisps were peeling off his. George wondered if they too would stiffen into wood together with the rest of the body. He shuddered with the draft.

The mourners wanted nothing more than to tear their gazes away, most attempt was in vain, and the room was like cut into shards of glances: Hastings and Dorset to Rivers who instead sat over his sister’s head buried in Edward’s chest. Buckingham’s was everywhere but nowhere in particular and Gloucester turned to the arras where his mother’s eyes tried to accuse both him and George, with George noticing neither. His looked-for refuge across the room in Isabel’s sanguine green. He supposed this too would be divine design, ‘G’ he hoped would reassure him, ‘was for George’.

For all the reborn love, men have died in worse ways, he thought, trying to put from his mind the quartered bodies of Burdett and Stacey’s, the vignettes reblooming like stubborn fleas. No price had become too lofty for never having to sleep again.

Indignant, his mother grabbed at the queen and her skirts of dowager velvet and departed the room trained by their ladies and a score of rosaries clacking against prayerbooks. Once the clatter faded into the corridor, Mistress Shore’s blonde face too slipped past the door, and hesitantly, even Isabel saw to leave.

Gloucester came to Rivers’ shoulder, but looked as if still pondering on whether he would hang on it or perhaps clap it, the scholar was growing sensitive to the pause. Or should he have taken notice of Hastings? Truly, he wondered, what had given for Clarence to still be here? ‘How I understand, dear brother, that our kingly ancestors were wise to keep the Tower for incarcerating princes. Only a month spent mewed within these stones imposed by their hands and your mind - addled. Suggestions of you as Lord Protector, were all good and well, that was before you lost the king’s love’

George straightened his back, giving Rivers, Dorset and Hastings glances laced with suggestion ‘But I have since regained it’

‘Make no mistake my lord, the law looks otherwise. You remain attainted. It need not be said how no attainted can become Lord protector to Kings. Why for calling you my lord? For you are not even that indeed. Your lands what would those be? For you are indeed just George Plantagenet, bearer of a style as lowly as bastards of a king’s get’

‘Pray plainly speak’ the guileless smile that had once charmed hundreds to the banner of the Clare bull, had been dredged up. ‘You who declare yourself too childish-foolish for this world. Indeed, you spoke part truth, for never did the world move with such spindliness, and never had a child’s soul attached to a tongue so like that of a serpent. Fancy designs it seems you harbour yourself to reign from the shadows of the throne. For our sweet nephew prince Edward is but said child, and it is I who say praise be to crowning taintless youth’

The sun’s beams were trumpeting for yellows as the day, behind the window, rose on Gloucester’s unshapely back. Before where the five lords stood, George raised his arm to see it shaking as if the tiredness and wine was wont to jump from his blood. How the cloth’s creased ends fanned in the light, fashioning wounds on his arms from stained sleeves. The lords’ thoughts made themselves known to him in figments of clarity, which he caught with varying focus. Rivers‘ eyes gawked, as if he felt one resurrected in the room, down through his hairshirt.

‘I say our lord Clarence has need to withdraw, narrow escape from death and then a brother’s demise in one night can make for jumbled humours’ and in these words Dorset confirmed that what he instead beheld was a pagan madness.

George sat on the seat; some wisdom had whispered to him, how this scene was no invite to tell of Gloucester’s treachery. He had miscalculated the opportunity and with a child’s innocence - ‘Pardon me all, for all my faults I am not the levereter in Eden. But you all do know I was forgiven’

Waving a hand forward to his steps, Gloucester made himself mediator to the space between the window and the men’s row. ‘Now you play the child. I remember you in attentive disposition with our tutor, your ear pricked up when the study of laws brooked the subjects of chancery and tenements. An annulment of attainder needs passing through Parliament. There was no such event’

‘Very well, if you are determined to stay the pedantick’ His breathing was beginning to settle ‘I was told there was a paper. I have a pardon then’

‘Not equivalent to a reversal of your fortunes nor your standing-‘ Gloucester began, his efforts at hiding the pleasure this gave him were a poorer shield to that who know knew him in his entirety than petals on a beetle’s back. George was ashamed he had to have come to this pass to truly see his brother for what he was.

‘I know that you overkeen fool! But with my pardon I shall process and make recovery of my lands’ his face darkened at the last words, he realised who would be the receivers of his petitions: Woodville, Gloucester...

‘Withall’ he heard him drawl on ‘What pardon was it? We know not. One for attainder or merely leave for restoration of forfeited land? Much to consider - did our late sovereign brother make specific reference to the previous attainder? Only that would do to expunge your lofty treasons, to make you a transactable individual’

‘You had just betrayed, dear brother while you gloated like an overripe partridge that it was a plain pardon. Thus, it be the kind of one referring to my previous attainder and attached crime, all you in this room are witness that he said the paper held no isolated restoral of fortunes. However, by his own admission there was a pardon, as there are only two breeds it could only also encompass the lifting of my attainder. What else?’ He regaled gesturing to the heads, some nodded in confused slowness like riderless horses. He swore he could make out Dorset’s whisper to his uncle: ‘How lamentable that the surpassing talents of the sons of York could not be combined’ and then he turned to the one darkly unimpressed ‘curious, it seems how that paper once scribed was taken and hidden in your coffers. How queer that what ought to have been proclaimed to all, has had its words yoked to treachery and obscurity’

Though easily come the grin was straining, pulling the tired skin taut against his cheekbones. When the sunlight had started stinging, did he find that the salty tears and sweat from days past had congealed themselves into a near mask. Now the lords would be privy to how his knowledge singled Gloucester out as his saboteur, and what Christian would tolerate a protector for the prince with fratricidal predilections? ‘Bring up the parchment now, unburden yourself of one less secret in your keeping- ’

A chuckle resounded in flout of an answer ‘Brother, we all know the content of the pardon for when your Lady Isabel went to the king, made aware of your mistaken apprehension, the lords before us were audience to your pardon. For myself, I know what I know as Lord Buckingham had well met me on the stairs after your release and told me all this’

It seemed George’s own merry retribution was to wait, but first his rise ‘Very well then. We are settled on the contents of my pardon; this demagogue’s exchange was for naught. Under general pardon I shall reclaim my lands forthwith, as one re-embraced in lady law’s rational cloak. There be no bar to my protectorship. Provisions for your replacing me in that office are superseded, and all is just as I said’

‘Oh foolish, giddy George’ derided Gloucester, smacking his lips ‘But what proof do we have that such formalities were abided by? The paper is nowhere to be seen and for such lofty crimes - words alone do not suffice for evidence. It be the charge of I who is named Lord Protector to attest to the validities of your redemption and, though thus far, I am satisfied to leave to you your life, for how high your treachery flew I am not satisfied to recognise your pardon of attainder on words alone, much less grant you an annulment. Hear me my lords! Consider how it would offend the jurors of the realm’

He gave six nods, the surplus George could not figure out to where, and with the fixing of his cap, and flounce of the hunch in his cape he made past the door. The lords had filed out, and stopping as if he forgot a trifle, Gloucester murmured from the arch ‘better legally dead, dear brother, than dead in the body- or the soul. Come now, we must not tarry, come make amends to the women we have offended with our politicking’

* * *

[SCENE 2]:

‘Pray tell, where may I find your beast of an Act?’ From outside the hollowed home, the Thames was a millrace and in it stood still for no one. Whisking on its March waters, merchants fluttered their cloths as others did standards. One barge shouted to another about this fortune and that as if they were not all beholden of the same surge in luck. Scarlett and purple damask bobbed around them like peacock’s tail, just a hair’s width above the water surface and in the greatest of dangers when some of the men took to passing the fabrics at one another with some of the coins plopping in the chasm of exchange.

To England a slow lumbering death; that of an old king was a memory shared by none from this life. The city’s traders knew nothing of how their quiet great-grandfathers speculated on Edward III’s death, secretively amassing more spun-gold for a future coronation, ever more with every year that the old king descended deeper into the grave. But Edward of York died young, and the gathering of cloth of gold and ermine for his son’s coronation was done in anyway but piecemeal.

When compline would come, with it the cold wind revealing the season’s true grit, Isabel knew L’Érber would find itself the new plum in this pie of bustle and she wished for nothing more than to shut herself in her chamber when the time came - not be in the cabinet grasping at papers. Strewn along: Warwick’s deeds and letters, now of an expired use, archaic souvenirs that however comfortable to behold, now led her to curse her sentimentality. But for them, the cursed Readeption Act would have been found three bells ago. In anticipation of the patter, she more now cursed George who for a week had attempted to reimagine its hiding place and to no avail from the comfort of his solar.

With a sigh in her hands, the mourning wool twitched and her henin fell back pulling at straggling hairs. It was in that solar she let out a huff and George drew her onto his chair’s arm, ‘My sweet’ chancing a lazy smile, ‘do I vex you?’

The twinkle of amusement confused her groan. ‘Oh, begone with your cajoles George, I say they will not inure me to this frenzy’

From where they sat before the window, the dying sun had them haloed in the red from the wood panels flushing around them. Time pressed on George with the crowd and with each second glance through the window’s vignette, the activity on the tide would stay in return as a play on his focus ‘Would that you be holed up here next winter, as I was in the Tower?’

He rubbed the small of her back and warmth spread through his fingers as if she had never known a furnace in her life. ‘I would rather holed up in the towers of my girlhood, with the Avon bellowing beneath - it would sing me to sleep’

His face darkened at this memory he had not the privilege to share, now their sister and brother’s alone. The Neville inheritance was part and parcel of Gloucester’s plan. Never before was a man’s mind so like a prism as his brother’s. Had he unblinded himself to the truthful side sooner, he would have had Anne packed to the silent orders by the morning of her return. Isabel would have seen in time, unblinded to duty as she was. ‘There would be none of that peace, my lady’ he paused as though somewhere in the throngs of men a glint swam up to his eye ‘there’ he pointed a shaking finger ‘and in that wise our futures do dwell. Our fates next winter will not settle any silence upon us - but that of huddling in corners or the cram at court’

Isabel nodded at the air’s rustle, where months ago would have been that of one of her lady’s skirts. Lifting his other hand, she kissed his palm and he softened. ‘Would that I could keep the clamour from my quiet lady’s door, but see there’ he emphasised to the window with a quick inclination of his head ‘There hides Buckingham and it suits us well’

‘Fie my lord, I shall return to my searches’ she said, unsticking herself from her place and making for the door.

It pleased him to have abated her nerves, as the expression he wore was stricken handsomer by the grin of a youth. ‘Isabel’ he called from his chair ‘would you not greet the Duke with me, for was not he once my rival suitor in your father’s grand designs?’

Her mouth contorted into one of her faux grimaces ‘Not as I continue to look as this moth!’ And she swept like a shadow through the door, the shifting sounds of her trying to fix her henin fading with each tired step. With each clunk heard from below, he thanked God for L’Érber that had at least stayed in their hands, ‘but only as a life estate’ he cringed thinking on their little pair of children. Margaret a tiny grand dame in the making and Edward, a golden prince. The sarcenets, the bear-keepers, the trumpeters... he stopped himself.

Buckingham had arrived.

‘Good cousin Clarence! Ah as you ebb I must flow’ The mute from Edward’s deathbed, a month past, had now cast his unassuming shroud by the tip of his felted hood. His green eyes burned with such intrigue that George bare took him for an eagelish bailiff, the one who would run circles about Warwick’s tapestries until a price would conjure.

George reflected a moment and held out the arm that, in other ages, would have waved an attendant forward ‘Flow indeed, dear cousin, what? Has the little prince my nephew already promised you the De Bohun lands?’

In the hall leading from the presence chamber, George jumped at him hooting into the vacant spaces. His question did not appear heard. When finally drawn into the solar, the sunset light riddled traces of mirth into Buckingham’s features. Wearied by the same, George simply screwed his eyes. ‘Here, I thought we had come to treat, disenfranchised duke to duke. Yet, you answer me with owl sounds’

Buckingham turned sideways and chuckled ‘I had once heard of your two hundred servants, and now I hear the London home grows emptier every day. My, what echoes produced! Tis not every century a prince’s house can be made to sound like it were roamed by ghosts’ and then he clasped his hands as if he had finished explaining an important matter ‘now come off it, where is Clarence’s famous store of Malmsey? A plotter fancies a sip, inspires the senses’

‘I have come off it’ George replied quietly stretching his hands past the crevasse of the door, drawing two maizers from the scullion concealed at the other end ‘Accept my proffered ale, perchance the spices will suffice for your faculties’

‘My, but you live as dead as the Countess of Warwick’ the eyes expanded. George could now see the yellow bits in the center floating in wonderment, golden as the hair that struck against the purple cloth with each wave of the Duke’s head. He was as unreadable as George had once been. This his mummer heir. ‘Now be merrier mon amis. I had heard your question, and no. The prince had not beckoned my lands back to me. Twas Gloucester that vowed to’

‘Certes he did. Tell me my lord, how fare those Lancastrian cousin-lands in the hands of he who would snatch the Warwick lands from his own brother and elderly mother-in-law? For at Stratford just as in Hatfield, there lie men. Men of persuasions older than York, followers of lords that may be called upon to root out princes. ‘Clarence’?, that name may be damnable, but the swan of de Bohun? When a badge as this attaches to blood as red as yours it be damnable and dangerous twice over’

‘Ah, and so they said you had run mad’

‘And so your beloved friend, the lord protector, will say how it was the princes’ mother that vetoed your just inheritance’ George chanced carrying the tune of the previous question ‘Twas ever Edward that made you orphan from your patrimony. The king who found you thoroughly despicable. Vain, a puffed-up popinjay trouncing about in those plums you wear now’ he continued as images of a former self swam behind his eyes. Swallowing between words turned George’s conscious task ‘You condemned him for cowardice when he would not go to war with France. Gloucester, did too, but he will string you up in your own fine ties once you show yourself unleadable by this elusive inheritance he draws at the end of his web. The crook-back hates any finery, be it character, look, ambition or charm. If it is not Edward’s he is determined it should be no one’s. And thus, he strung me up where he could not cut me’

‘Come now, cousin do not weep’ he cajoled the reddening face. Buckingham gesticulated when he spoke, in marketplaces and little elsewhere, but he had never been to the plays, had seen none of this. ‘Why were you not ever my kindred spirit? Look as you did that decade ago you were in my lady grandmother’s keeping at Tonbridge’

George’s hand latched around the maizer’s stem, his spare one, he passed from on cheek to the other, feeling hotness from behind. He was not sure what had just bubbled in the pit of his stomach. Near death followed by near destitution, the silence they came bearing; fertile ground for contemplation. But his humours? Still enigmas, but wheedling in his control. There was no blur when he refixed his eyes on Buckingham, on that younger face. George had merely swapped the smile he bore upon his entrance, to a grin that looked stolen from the ones he would crack, all along the way from boyhood to deathbed, for his brothers. ‘I remember, your grandsire’s draconian rule over my mother. “The fool duke, and the woman who could not keep him from besmirching England’s peace” that much was said’

Buckingham waited as George gulped down his ale. Appetising it may have looked, but one sip of his own was enough to convince him it was rank swill heaped with sugar. Then again, Clarence’s taste for drink was always objectionable, a serenity descended upon him all the same ‘Let us not wash away those hours with sad recountenance. You saw me stripped of my becomings, personhood, outside Edward’s death chamber you had whispered to me, that day, of how I may yet have something, some tool that may see my fortunes restored and that I should think on you thence. Did you see in the stars man? For I have found it.’

Buckingham was no soothsayer, he could bare stay awake when the astronomers would babble about this Mercury and those ascending, descending stars. This Wednesday, he had merely bet on the famed delusion of Clarence, ever most prodigious in breeding golden glories of crumbs. He stood waiting with intrigue, surely, he was not stupid enough to call him all the way here to tell him of the right to sue? A thoroughly exhausted option.

George was now circling the stem of the cup as if his finger were their earth whirling about the sun. Candlelight succeeded over sun, and the hazel of his eyes appeared to jut with that same rhythm, was George unfocused or growing impatient? For a surety, Buckingham was ‘what now, man?’

‘I was merely thinking, of double apparitions. The disenfranchised: you and I, and the Princes of Wales. A mother, Edward-less, another, beholden of a king, only not yet truly for he is not yet crowned’ as the compline hour rung he stopped that motion and leaned back in his stool as if he were still deep in thought.

‘You have slain one at Tewksbury, but what of the other?’ hesitantly crept out of Buckingham 

‘See, here that would cut Gloucester’s protectorship and life, the Woodville affinity too as they would think him their murderer. Buckingham would you deal with those two boys? Complete the cycle?’

‘Taint my person solely for you to see your brother cast down? No. For all that I am Constable of the tower, all that I may do undoes in the same wise that it empowers me. A bloodied neck stands better in the heavens when not dragged elsewhere by a bloody soul. No wise man is beholden of both’

George shook his head ‘Good. You would not bring further curses down on me. Were Gloucester and I not Edward and Richard’s age at Tonbridge and then in Flanders? Same as the two boys, trembling on the tides’ Buckingham screwed his eyes as if his own hearing waned. ‘I have it! What the fate of those two princelings will be. Often I had dreamed of his form, Lancaster’s Edward swearing down on me, trickling in blood and curses. That is of no matter now. Let the queen of fortune spin her wheel, for no matter the place of stop, every spoke sees the top at times. It is god’s will that it be this repetitive, and so by god’s will the stars showed me how I shall find my space on the top should I bring to heel our ungoverned land. The bottom I had passed for you see, I had jumped death’s grasp...’

‘I am growing weary. Pack those ruminations of chance wheels for your Neville wife or whoever’s patience can also decipher.’

George smiled wryly for the disaffection in his tone at his Woodville one, although they may have need of her yet. ‘You see, it was Gloucester who had Edward of Lancaster slain not I’ he presented as though this epiphany had just come to him ‘God had tested me in having me near pay for all my brothers’ darknesses, for I to be roused from my inactive disposition the lord had put me face it. Once I had loved my brother Gloucester well, ne’er chanced a second look at his motives. He is to be saddled with all the blames that had slipped him by, and die with them to avenge the light he would have corrupted from this world. I shall prevail bloodlessly over E, and in doing that unite both houses and stay the spin. I tell you, Buckingham, you had been compelled to eschew my brother and his false badges of office so that you may seek me in my ruin. I, who hold it in my true gift to justiciably restore you to your dues. Your de Bohun lands. You have appeared to me bearing the first task for my quest, my quest for the crown. You are much needed on this journey’

‘First, tell why it is you that will restore me’ he demanded

‘The De Bohun inheritance had been split by the houses of Lancaster and Stafford. You are heir to the latter while I to the former for within the act of readeption, I was named Edward of Lancaster’s heir should he have no son to follow him. With that, I too was made Duke of York’

‘But you turned against him!’

‘Aye, I had also turned against King Edward, but to the day I was wrongfully contained in the Tower, I remained the Duke of Clarence. Parliament, council, none the denier’ he was merging back into his older form before Buckingham’s eyes. Embodying the charm that was near the death of him. ‘One bloody Parliament is just as good as another in the eyes of god, in the eyes of men, well York, Lancaster a cause just as good as another, the one that sins less and hands more alms the holier. A York council may make a cipher of me, but by Lancaster I stand rightful king’

‘That is all well and good cousin’ Buckingham murmured a bit unsure ‘But what strength does this usher us?’

‘With your support, we may yoke Woodville to us. We will have their and Gloucester’s pillars of power gone, you will get a hold of my nephews and have them packed post-horse to Ireland. If they are to go from there to Burgundy, I shall see to myself. My brother will have no one to be lord protector to and the queen’s family will turn to us to avenge them. Gloucester’s neck will bear the dirth of death that barely eluded me. As royal heir to Lancaster, there will be none from either house to be on the throne but me with York’s princesses slipped behind me. As noble heir to Lancaster, I would graciously relinquish the crown’s share of the inheritance unto you, something that no other man on earth can make true and net for all your descendants hereafter. Thus, you came to me.’

‘Would you in this wise determine old Margaret of Anjou’s role?’

George waved dismissively snuffing out a nearby candle by accident. ‘All her allies are vanquished, but if I brand myself her son’s successor and avenger, heap her into the honours of a dowager Queen. Would she curry foreign support to my cause?’

‘Believe it so. The old woman is desperate’

‘There, lead me treat with her. You shall be our intercessor in the Tower.’

‘Two queens. Both with Edwards who would never become kings?’ the door behind them opened, slightly, for Buckingham did not hear it. Isabel proclaimed a dozen apologies before finally laying out the readeption act between them. When she left, the door closed with a muffle that would not have escaped his notice earlier. To how much had she been privy?

‘I daresay, you are beginning to understand’ George said guiding his attentions back to him. The papers looked fragile but they made a scratching sound when George turned them to him.

‘But the two boys? Whose hands should be masked as their slayers?’

‘I will make of Gloucester a king Herrod. But I would damn myself if I had the two boys slain. As it was with Gloucester and I, they will be spirited abroad’

‘But the two York boys of then had returned, hadn’t they?’

‘But this time they won’t’ George said with a certainty that left Buckingham in unsmiling silence.

‘G shall rule over E’ Buckingham parroted without a moment’s doubt. ‘Now onto our risings, your Staffordshire men, they still remember you? What of the Irish, are they not ones to read the future in the stars?’


End file.
